The Discussion of Kids

Kids. It’s such a strange subject to try and bring up on a first date. Luckily, I had an easy “in” to that conversation with Tere. It happened before we even met, actually. Her online dating profile said she didn’t want children. So, I asked her in one of our many phone conversations if that was a deal-breaker for her because it was for me. I wasn’t sure if I really wanted children but I definitely wanted to know that the door was open and that it was a possibility. At 39, I understood why Tere thought kids were not an option. But at 32, I was still trying to figure it out. And although my career was everything to me, Tere had been on a much more steep track – seriously upwardly mobile. Tere worked all through school. She worked full-time through her undergad and then after 6 years of climbing the corporate ladder, she continued climbing while she got her MBA at night. By the time we met, she was a good bit ahead of me. She had the spankin’ new Mercedes and the fancy house near the beach. I had a cramped apartment in West Hollywood and a 7-year old Lexus. It was exciting but a little bit of an issue for me. I wanted to know how much money Tere made but knew that once I knew, it wouldn’t have any mystery to it anymore. The not knowing was clearly better than the knowing. So we let the elephant stay in the room without mention.

Our first date in LA was at Lucques. Tere came to pick me up. I was nervous that she would think poorly of me because of my less-than-amazing apartment. She didn’t. When we got outside, she said I should drive her car to the restaurant. Now I was nervous that she would think poorly of me if I drove badly. Her car was very different than mine – heavy since it was a convertible. I tried to act nonchalant as I weaved through traffic down to Melrose. Yeah, I drive expensive Mercedes all the time – no big deal. Before we got out of the car, she made it clear that driving cars and opening doors were my jobs. Ordering wine too. Those were all mine. I wasn’t completely sure; it was new, but I kinda liked how it felt. I guess it was the beginning of creating our identities as a couple – delineating between what each of us wanted and needed. These were the things that Tere wanted and I was pretty determined to give them to her. To this day, I drive everywhere. I’m not always great at opening doors but I can order an amazing bottle of wine.

Comments

I found this so interesting the navigation through a relationship with 2 women which I understand fairly well given that I’m in one myself but the “driving of the car and opening doors” part was so fascinating to read because everyone has their own terms that are drawn in the start of a relationship. I’m happy to see that you are addressing all of this and being honest about how you felt about it. I often talk about this with Susan how you compensate for the things that the other does not do in a relationship–I’ll kill the bugs you handle the DVD player- things like that, things that you may have never thought you would do. We really make our own rules quite often. Recently I’m finding that a lot of my straight friends are re-defining their roles as well- it’s refreshing.
Enough from me…wonderful blog and what an amazing, supportive group of friends you have- the comments always make me smile.

I think the cool think about a “non-traditional” relationship is that it requires us to literally break down who we were programmed to be and rebuild ourselves in our own likeness. This allows us to get less hung-up on the roles that our parents played and that we were “intended” to model ourselves after. There are so many other areas/things that ended up being “mine” vs Tere’s over time. And now with kids in school, we’re finding our roles to be very interesting and somewhat confusing to us and other people looking in. 🙂 It’s required us to evolve again!